bc skeptics | 1999: Alternative Medicine: How to Spot the Flaws in the Published Research

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	Alternative Medicine: How to Spot the Flaws in the Published Research Dr. Wallace Sampson

Presenter: BC Skeptics and Department of Psychology
Title: Alternative Medicine: How to Spot the Flaws in the Published Research
Speaker: Dr. Wallace Sampson, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Stanford University.
Date: 7:30pm, 16 November 1999
Location: Halpern Centre at SFU.
Admission: Open to public. Free.

Alongside a successful clinical and academic career in oncology and hematology, Dr. Sampson has long been one of America's leading critics of medical quackery. A founder and past chair of the National Council Against Health Fraud, he is a fellow of CSICOP and editor of the new journal, The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine. Dr. Sampson lectures and consults widely, appears regularly in the media, and testifies frequently in court regarding unsubstantiated medical claims. He has been a vocal opponent of dubious Mexican cancer clinics like the one that attracted the late Saskatchewan teenager, Tyrell Dueck.

Using the techniques of close reading and careful analysis described in this lecture, Dr. Sampson has exposed numerous flaws in widely-touted publications claiming to support various areas of alternative medicine. In expounding on these analytical principles, he will show how they were used to reveal serious methodological shortcomings in studies that purportedly demonstrate the effectiveness of acupuncture and homeopathy and to detect flaws in research claiming that psychological support groups can extend the longevity of cancer patients.

Dr. Sampson's lecture will be of interest both to those who wonder whether alternative medicine really has an adequate scientific basis and to those interested in experimental methodology and how subtle artifacts and confounds can lead to false conclusions in apparently well-controlled research. In addition to exposing honest mistakes in clinical research, Dr. Sampson has been at the forefront of attempts to deter medical frauds who prey on desperate and vulnerable people.

:: random quote

Nothing that we could say could add to the impressiveness of the lesson furnished by the events of the past year, as to the needs and the dangerous condition of the neglected classes in our city. Those terrible days in July—the sudden appearance, as if from the bosom of the earth, of a most infuriated and degraded mob; the helplessness of property holders and the better classes;… immense destruction of property—were the first dreadful revelations to many of our people of the existence among us of a great, ignorant, irresponsible class who were growing up here without any permanent interest in the welfare of the community or the success of the government…. It should be remembered that there are no dangers to the value of property, or to the permanency of our institutions, so great as those from the existence of such a class of vagabond, ignorant, and ungoverned children. This 'dangerous class' has not begun to show itself as it will in eight or ten years when these boys and girls are matured. Those who were too negligent or too selfish to notice them as children, will be fully aware of them as men. They will vote. They will have the same rights as we ourselves, though they have grown up ignorant of moral principle…. They will poison society. They will perhaps be embittered at the wealth and the luxuries they never share. Then let society beware, when the outcasts, vicious, reckless multitude … swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come to know their power and use it.

Children's Aid Society

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url: http://www.bcskeptics.info/calendar/1999.11.16.html